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One of the fundamental laws of psephology (the study of elections) is Duverger’s Law. This “law” affirms that in single-member districts, where the winner is whoever wins the most votes (plurality voting), the system will produce two major parties. The presence of third parties naturally encourages strategic voting, in which a voter will not choose his or her favorite candidate in order to avoid a “worse” outcome, such as the victory of his or her least preferred candidate. Though this law has

1. Albuquerque Journal says open primaries are something Democrats and Republicans can agree on. "More than one in five voters in New Mexico declined to state a party when registering to vote. About 38 percent of registered voters ages 18 to 24 fall into that category. And because many candidates in New Mexico face no opposition beyond the primary, the winner is often declared before independents get a chance in weigh in." While the Journal is only advocating for "limited primary reform," the

1. Democratic legislators in New Mexico say they support opening primaries up to independent voters. "The effort is being taken up by two Democratic state legislators from Albuquerque. Sen. Bill O’Neill and Rep. Emily Kane planned to announce today that they will introduce legislation in January that would end the exclusion of independent voters or voters who decline to state a party affiliation when they register." Republicans mostly object to the idea, saying that party principles would be d

Thirteen-year-old Stephanie Roman-Reyes can identify with the tens of thousands of refugee children in danger of deportation along the southern U.S. border. Huddled beneath a tree in Lafayette Square with her infant sister and mother, the Queens, New York middle-school student began crying as she talked on Thursday about her father, whom authorities returned to Mexico three years earlier.“For me, it’s tough not to have a dad by my side,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “It’s really depres

1. New Mexico's secretary of state refuses to defend the state's closed primary system. "This week New Mexico Secretary of State Dianna Duran responded to a lawsuit filed by Albuquerque attorney J. Edward Hollington on behalf of DTS (declined to state a party preference) voter David Crum by declining to defend the constitutionality of the state law that prohibits DTS (independent) voters from casting a ballot in the state’s primary elections." New Mexico's attorney general, Gary King, has file

1. The New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union sues New Hampshire secretary of state over restrictive ballot access laws. "The law says third parties may not gather signatures to petition their way onto ballots before Jan. 1 of the election year. It took effect Tuesday." The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the state's Libertarian Party, claims the law will force third party candidates to "sit on the sidelines" all of 2015 before they can build support for the 2016 elections. 2. California voters wil

1. Opinion piece in the Montgomery Advertiser advocates adopting a nonpartisan, top-two open primary system in Alabama. "Even more importantly, however, this eliminates the unfair choices that some voters have to make under the current system. Because they can only vote in one party's primary, voters are sometimes forced to choose between voting in a local race contested in one primary or a district or statewide race contested in the other primary." Alabama currently has an open partisan prima

By the time Dwight David Eisenhower became president of the United States, he had already secured historical immortality as the supreme commander of the victorious Allied Forces in the Second World War. While vanquishing the Nazis, he could not help but marvel at the infrastructural achievements of the Germans, most notably their broad highway network called the Autobahn. The German’s national accomplishment juxtaposed strongly with the United States’ meagerly funded, crumbling interstate highw

In 2011, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman lamented that the proliferation of half-true statements and fallacious accusations during the 2012 presidential campaign had inaugurated an era of "post-truth politics." This era is particularly enabled by the features of our contemporary media-saturated political environment: the distrust of the mainstream media, the rise of alternative and slanted news outlets, and a 24-hour news cycle that emits data and soundbites at a velocity and volume that

"The term 'PTSD' has come into the common lexicon in a very non-specific manner, often used to refer to any type of emotional reaction to traumatic or disturbing events," said Dr. David Reiss, M.D., in an interview for IVN. Reiss is a psychiatrist from San Diego currently providing treatment within the Uniform Services Program at The Brattleboro Retreat in Vermont. It's important to understand that PTSD isn't just an abbreviation on a memo from a bureaucrat's office. It is a debilitating condit